VIATOR 1: WHAT DO WE HAVE OUR FEET FOR?
(2020)
"What do we have our feet for?"
Robert Walser in Wanderungen mit Robert Walser by Carl Seelig
Robert Walser, distorted in perspective
Photographic portrait of the poet
in the Robert Walser Sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn in Biel
(photographed in September 2019)
The visible structure of the walkable Robert Walser Sculpture by Thomas Hirschhorn in Biel can be seen as his attempt to mercilessly turn outside the poet's inner life, which is presumably hidden behind the language. Hirschhorn does not restrict his work, he lets it proliferate in all directions, and where there are borders, they are subject to external conditions. One has to penetrate this crude and bizarre labyrinth of profane matter in order to then encounter the swarm of sentences from the works of the poet, which are quoted by various present day contemporaries in order to prove Walser's current relevance - it is a perspective distorted picture of his work that you find like this.
Robert Walser put himself into his precise, soft, delicate and sometimes whimsical language, as if he wanted to spin himself into a shell that was both a protection and a border to the outside reality, but also a designed expression of his inner world. There, in small, seemingly light and insignificant things meanders and proliferates his world - but always shaped and enclosed by language.
© Fredi Hüberli
